FILTER Magazine #56

By Kyle Lemmon on January 28, 2010

James Graham’s Caledonian brogue and producer Andy McFarlane’s earth-shattering guitar lines are ever-present but Forget the Night Ahead is far from a paint-by-numbers Twilight Sad effort. Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters’ follow-up uncloaks a sordid adult world after the Kilsyth quartet’s stupor-inducing debut lamped turbulent adolescence. Drum/piano death knells gash open the darkness on the “The Room,” while My Latest Novel’s Laura McFarlane supplies an ominous violin line over the destruction of “That Birthday Present.” An emo band has never sounded so appealing. The cathartic vampire single “I Became a Prostitute” lends credence to reports of the Glaswegian group maxing out their Chem 19 recording desk. Elsewhere, a suffocating suburban pall enshrouds “The Neighbors Can’t Breathe.” By the time the haunting, utterly apocalyptic closer “At the Burnside” wafts into sight, lyrics such as “the brothers were born with a lump in their heart” seem achingly appropriate.